석유산업의 경쟁력 강화 및 석유 자원의 안정적 확보를 위한 법제도의 정비

Energy is one of the issues, posing a threat to national security, to economy and to the environment, and is closely connected with a range of social issues such as poverty, a lack of opportunities, and social conflicts. The poorer people pay a larger fraction of their income to procure energy and therefore their use of energy would be limited. This would have perverse impacts on their quality of life in the end. Also either low or high energy prices would result in inefficiencies in its production and consumption. Republic of Korea is the 10th largest in energy consumption and depends on petroleum for around half of energy consumption. Korea is also the 5th largest oil importing country which procures its oil supply abroad. Energy security is critical as energy supply could be vulnerable due to oil producing countries' resource nationalism. Oil industry should undergo restructuring to cope with intensified environmental regulations worldwide and to remain competitive. Korea has to develop a new policy securing stable oil supply, eliciting reasonable investment in oil refineries, promoting competitiveness of oil industry, building up environment-friendly oil industry, facilitating oil industry's involvement in international oil market, and restructuring economy for energy efficiency. Energy policy should not be subordinate to economy policy, but be an independent one. Korea needs to restructure energy laws in order to ensure effective implementation of energy policy.